


we'll burn together

by howlish



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, fake dating but i did it wrong, this fic is just 'why i love dimivain: a oneshot'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25818292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlish/pseuds/howlish
Summary: It was a ridiculous concept from the start: A king did not need a wife any more than a margrave did. Post-AM 'fake dating' dimivain oneshot.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 158





	we'll burn together

**Author's Note:**

> I started this in November. Please take it.

It was a ridiculous concept from the start: A king did not need a wife any more than a margrave did, had no worries of ruling alone when his closest friends had become his dearest advisors. When Sylvain had heard just how much Dimitri was being harassed over his unwillingness to find a bride he had laughed outright, _tradition be damned, didn’t they have more important things to worry about?_ , but the more the additional stress weighed on Dimitri’s already overburdened shoulders, the less a laughing matter it seemed.

And what was the point of having those dearest advisors, if not to help him handle situations he was totally unprepared for? Truthfully, even though Ingrid and Felix both had expressed their absolute disdain for the concept, Sylvain had the best intentions: Not to teach Dimitri how to attract a mate, he was plenty endearing on his own, but how to perhaps not scare them away immediately after.

Dimitri agreed without hesitation, indeed relieved to finally have someone taking the concern seriously, and Sylvain thanked his lucky stars once more that the man had always been so trusting of him. Good intentions went so much farther with Dimitri than they could with anyone else, _even now_.

The plan was simple: To practice dating, they would go on dates. Sylvain was an expert in the field, and he had no doubt that his weak points (trust, mostly) would be Dimitri’s strong ones, a perfect compliment to teach him the ropes and release him into the wilds of courtship, hopefully with enough weapons to not be summarily devoured. Their first date was purely intended to ease Dimitri into the idea, a dinner set in Sylvain’s own quarters, where the pressure was at an absolute minimum. No witnesses, a clear time limit, and an easy exit at the end. Even if they _hadn’t_ been friends for their entire lives, it would have been the best possible situation for Dimitri’s safe tutoring.

And Sylvain took it as a point of great personal pride, that his amusement only showed through in a smile, when he opened the door to see his king so full of nerves he looked ready to fray at all ends. “Your Majesty, what brings you here at this time of night?” He saw a dozen arguments welling up in Dimitri, clearly not sure if he should argue at the formal address or the faked conversation first, and laughed before any one complaint could win the battle. “I’m kidding, Dimitri. I won’t make you play pretend. Seriously, you can relax, it’s just us.” Moving aside to let Dimitri in, he added a cheeky, “So just how many times did you change clothes?”

The way Dimitri cleared his throat roughly was answer enough, the teasing clearly doing its job of loosening him up a bit as he took his seat at the little set table, a smattering of red across his cheeks. “It seemed.. important. That I look presentable.”

“Oh, it is! And I must say, you look good in your armor and your kingly regalia, but you look fantastic out of it.” Something about the mantle had always made Dimitri look intimidating, purposefully hulking, but in its absence, the material of his plainclothes did plenty to accentuate his natural musculature, his defined chest suddenly perfect for running hands over. “Did you pick that shirt yourself?”

“With some assistance from Mercedes. She was.. _enthusiastic_ in her support.”

_Atta girl._ He’d have to remember to thank her later— and consider making her his wingman in the future, too. Sitting down across from Dimitri, he poured their wine, completing the romantic atmosphere that had started with candles and a warm meal already prepared. “You’re doing great so far. You showed up on time, you look good, and that blush you are sporting is just adorable.”

“Sylvain!” Dimitri’s immediate protest was met with a deeper blush in kind, a fact he seemed to realize as he raised a hand to cover his face in embarrassment.

With all of Sylvain’s teasing through the night, he half expected an overwhelmed Dimitri to make a strategic exit as soon as their food was consumed, but instead they let their conversation over dinner drift the same way it would any other time. Before he knew it, their plates were cleared and set aside, the wine bottle half empty between them, and the candles flickered low.

It was in the lull after laughing at a joke clearly at Felix’s expense that Dimitri leaned back with a long, low sigh. “I don’t know that I’ve learned much about dating. I think we just had dinner.”

“Well, yeah. What do you think dating is? It _can_ be all pomp and circumstance, showing up with flowers and showering compliments to soften them up, but only if that’s what suits you. If I thought you would enjoy _wooing_ someone, I would teach you that. If you both had a good time, it was a good date.”

Dimitri was silent a moment, swirling the wine in his glass slowly, staring into nothing. “I don’t know that this suits me, either. If you hadn’t been such a dear friend, I would have made a fool of myself from the outset. And I certainly wouldn’t have known what to _talk_ about.” Sylvain made to answer, to assure him it was alright, but paused— there was more on the tip of Dimitri’s tongue, the truth of whatever was bothering him. Sure enough, after another few beats, he spoke again. “I worry I can’t form natural connections anymore. I am worlds apart from any who _think_ they would have me.”

_Ah._ There it was. He’d known something like this was buried in Dimitri’s chest, but he hadn’t expected it to come out so quickly. Perhaps the wine had loosened his tongue, after all.

Sylvain let the subject rest a moment, the silence not uncomfortable. “You know, from you to Byleth to the most common commoner you can imagine, _everyone_ survived a war.” Dimitri’s gaze shifted from the space of wall he had been rather intently examining up til now, and Sylvain knew he had hit on something. “We all have casualties. You’d be surprised how deep loss goes. And how similar it can look at its core.”

“...Can what I have truly be reduced to _loss?”_ Sylvain understood implicitly what he meant: Loss painted the picture of a victim. Dimitri had experienced immeasurable pain, but he would not suffer being known as a victim. He was no innocent, and to forget it was to do him a disservice.

It was, in fact, one of the things Sylvain most adored about him.

“No, it can’t. But you have to stop seeing yourself as this.. _untouchable beast._ There are people by your side who have the capacity to understand you.” He meant himself, of course, though he couldn’t bring himself to say as much— for all Felix could predict Dimitri, for all Byleth could guide his hand, Sylvain felt he was in a unique position to truly _understand_ him. Sylvain had not killed in the same brutality Dimitri had, but his hands were dirtied in other ways. He had hurt people, selfishly, for nothing more than his own desire to hurt and be hurt. And he had the capacity to do it again, at the slightest provocation Sylvain could drop full-bodied into his old self-destruction, and take as many people down with him as he could get his hands on.

They had never addressed it, but even in the deepest parts of Dimitri’s misery, on the messiest days, Sylvain felt they had understood each other. They both spoke of burning for eternity, of being punished for sins they would not renounce. Eventually, it had started to sound like a promise. _We’ll burn together._

“There will be others who understand you, too.”

Dimitri took another drink, staring into the last of his wine once more, and gave a low hum.

“Perhaps there will.”

——

Their second date was a surprise— for Sylvain. Celebratory feasts were fewer and farther between since the end of the war, something they all took as a good sign, but this one had been well-earned. A straggling group of Empire loyalists had holed up in an old church and taken several hostages, a last-ditch effort at revenge that they had to know they wouldn’t survive. It was dangerous for the hostages, no reason to keep them alive, but against all odds the Knights of Faerghus’s swift, exacting strike had left zero friendly casualties.

It was worth celebrating, one of the few times they could do so guiltlessly, and the party atmosphere was so infectious that Sylvain hardly noticed Dimitri’s late arrival until the king was directly in front of him. “Sylvain.”

Turning away from his conversation with Annette, he heard her give a little giggle as she registered the sight at the same time he did, and she was the first to speak up. “Your Majesty! Who are the flowers for?”

Dimitri jumped a little at the question, clearly not anticipating Annette’s presence, and he stuttered out, “S-Sylvain,” again before refocusing, putting the small but elegant bouquet he held into Sylvain’s arms. “Your performance was astounding. As always, I can trust you to put the lives and welfare of innocents before all else, even the plan. Your contributions to the knights and the Kingdom are immeasurable. Thank you.”

Sylvain was dumbstruck, eyes going from the pretty flowers in his arms to Dimitri’s earnest face, not sure where to begin. Normally, it would be with a denial, praising the people who made it possible instead (Felix knowing his patterns well enough to always watch his back, Mercedes never admonishing his reckless moves as long as she could be there to protect him in turn), but Dimitri had left little room for it.

“Thank you, Dimitri, that’s very kind,” he finally answered, _willing_ the sudden heat to leave his cheeks. “In return,” a slow recovery, but as the band’s song changed to something more intended for dancing, he grinned, “how about another lesson?” Sylvain turned back to place his bouquet on his seat, addressing Annette. “Watch this for me?”

“Sure!” she chirped cheerily, standing up and scooping the flowers into her arms. “In fact, I’ll take them _all_ the way back to your room for you!”

_“Annette!”_ Sylvain pretended to be affronted, tone scandalized. “I had very big plans for that room tonight! Are you trying to stop me from _enjoying_ myself this evening?”

Annette got a wicked grin and said _“Yes,”_ giggling on her merry way out of the hall.

“She is very drunk,” Sylvain sighed fondly, and focused on Dimitri once more. “Ready for your lesson?”

“You know I _know_ how to dance, right?” He took Sylvain’s offered hand anyway, and they started towards the dance floor.

“Oh, I’m well aware. You could lead classes on how to be perfectly poised, stiff as a board, and bored out of your mind.” They got into position, Sylvain graciously allowing Dimitri the lead. “I’m going to teach you how to dance like a _person_ , not a noble. First, forget everything you know about dancing. Your body will remember. Just focus on your dance partner.”

Dimitri took a breath, and unconsciously edged a bit closer. “At least you make that much easy.”

“Second, your hand is way too high on my back. I’m not your political ally, I’m your date.” Or representing it, anyway. “Even the waist is too formal— if you’re trying to be intimate with someone, a hand on their hip is perfectly acceptable.” Sylvain took Dimitri’s hand in his own, and moved it down accordingly.

“..isn’t that a bit..”

“Just don’t grab ass on the dancefloor and you’re _fine_. I promise.”

Dimitri cleared his throat roughly, and Sylvain laughed aloud. Embarrassed or not, Dimitri was smiling, and he wasn’t moving his hand away.

“Alright, Sylvain. I’ve forgotten how to dance. Now what?”

“It’s just us.” He initially meant that this celebration was largely populated by the knights, but shifted tactics in the middle, moving even closer. _“It’s just us,”_ he repeated, and Dimitri’s eye met his. Sylvain started to sway his hips to the music, and after a moment of getting into the beat, he pulled Dimitri into motion.

It was unsurprisingly close to a waltz, but Sylvain was careful to change up his own moves enough to keep Dimitri guessing, to keep him from falling into old habits. And to Sylvain’s delight, the hand never left his hip, except for the impromptu lift and twirl Dimitri had pulled in a moment of high energy. Sylvain had laughed; he wasn’t used to being on that end of it, and he could certainly see the appeal.

“I feel like everyone is watching us,” Dimitri said quietly after a few songs, and Sylvain could see the burgeoning discomfort in the weight on his shoulders.

“You wanna get some fresh air? The garden should be pretty quiet.”

He let out a sigh of relief, and nodded eagerly; Sylvain wasted no time sliding them out of the dance and towards the nearest exit, leading Dimitri with their hands clasped lightly. “You did good,” he said on the way, “it felt to me like you were actually having fun.”

“I.. I was.” Even Dimitri sounded a bit surprised by that. “I didn’t think it would be so easy as you made it sound.”

“Frankly, neither did I.” They reached the porch overhanging the garden and he let go, leaning on the railing. “I’m glad you were able to let loose a bit. I had fun, too.”

Dimitri joined him, and a comfortable silence overtook them, breathing in the night air.

“I have a confession, Sylvain.”

“Mm?”

“With the flowers... I was trying to woo you, as you said.”

“Oh yeah?” He smiled, warmth budding in his chest. “Well you did a fantastic job. I was totally swept off my feet. Here I thought you’d hate that part, but you totally nailed it!”

“Oh,” Dimitri lit up, “I-I’m glad you feel that way! I thought for sure I was unclear.”

“Not at all, you’re a natural. You’re gonna make someone very happy someday. Now it’s just a matter of choosing the right partner.”

“..ah, hm. Alright. Perhaps.. we could handle that another time. It’s been a long day for all of us.” Dimitri extracted himself a bit awkwardly, but Sylvain could only assume it was for the uncomfortable topic. It was definitely the least pleasant part of all this… Sylvain nodded his agreement, said good night, and they parted ways.

——

“I’m just—” Sylvain was interrupted by a sudden twist of the blade he was defending against, having to work in a deft maneuver of his lance, “not sure what else to teach him, you know? I really thought there’d be more to this, but he’s charming enough on his own.”

Felix moved in again, pressing Sylvain with quick, aggressive strikes. “I am _begging_ you to talk to anyone else about this.”

“Oh come on, it’s not that bad,” he was purely on the defensive, a tactic he knew wouldn’t serve him much longer as Felix got into his stride, every hit landing harder. “It was my idea, but a part of me doesn’t wanna marry him off at all.”

_“Sylvain.”_ Another powerful hit sent a jolt up Sylvain’s arm, but he managed to hold onto his weapon, just barely. “I don’t want to hear about your little crush on the boar.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“I know what you—” Felix cut off with a curse as the butt of Sylvain’s lance twirled up to try to catch him in the head, dropping his sword to grab the lance with one hand, the other balling into a fist that caught Sylvain hard in the eye.

Sylvain shifted his momentum with the punch to minimize the damage, but hit the ground in the same motion, tossing aside his lance to admit defeat. This was a trick Felix had used multiple times before (disarming Felix was more dangerous than letting him keep his sword), but Sylvain still managed to get caught by it _every single time_.

Felix flopped down next to him with a huff. “I know what you _meant_ , but I also know what it looks like when you’re actually interested in someone. And I don’t like it.”

Laying out on the floor of the training room, Sylvain weighed his options. It wasn’t like Felix was revealing any special news to him, so to deny it would be… well, it wouldn’t matter, because Felix wouldn’t allow it. He hated when Sylvain lied to him. Would probably put him in a headlock. Best to avoid it while he was in prime headlocking position.

“So what? I’m into plenty of people.” That lie, maybe, could slide by.

“Don’t play with me. I’m serious.” Or maybe not. “I saw how you treated him after we found him. When he was at his worst. We were all worried, but you…” Felix trailed off the way he always did, when he had something difficult to say. His honesty wouldn’t let him keep it totally bottled up, but his discomfort with communication as a whole wouldn’t let it come all the way out, either.

Sylvain, of course, had an inkling as to what he was referring to. But maybe he wasn’t feeling so merciful today. Or he just didn’t want to acknowledge it himself. “But I what, Felix?” They were both staring at the wall or ceiling, eye contact was easy to avoid when they had serious talks, and avoidance was necessary if Felix was going to actually _say_ anything.

Even so, his voice was quiet, the kind of tone that put Sylvain on edge. “You always seemed to take some sick joy in it. Where I saw a rampaging boar.. you just saw yourself. Am I right?”

Nail, meet head.

He couldn’t deny it, wouldn’t, doing so would imply Sylvain was somehow better than Dimitri. Felix knew what he knew. But denial wasn’t what Felix wanted, would just dig Sylvain deeper into his oft-dug grave.

Instead, he said, “Felix, you remember our promise? Not that one, the other one.”

No answer. Felix had never forgotten a promise made in his life. Sylvain deigned to remind him anyway.

“That first night, after we reunited with everyone, after we saw the state Dimitri was in… we promised that if he got any worse, if he was too far gone, we’d kill him ourselves. We knew he was close to destroying what we’d fought so hard to preserve, and we knew that no one else could stop him.” They hadn’t spoken of that promise since the night they’d made it, only passed it through glances across the battlefield, furrowed brows in war meetings, tightening grips on their blades. “I’m not going to break our promise. No matter what. Have I _ever_ let romance get between us?”

Felix had sat up, a leg pulled towards his chest unconsciously as he listened. “...The trumpets of victory play, and everyone forgets.”

“Not me.” _And not Dimitri, either,_ but Felix didn’t need to hear that. He knew.

There was a long silence, as Felix worked through it all. Finally he stood, and grabbed Sylvain’s hand to jerk him up as well. “Just be careful. With the both of you.”

Sylvain nodded, and Felix left. He was half through cleaning up the training hall when it struck him that he had just agreed to date Dimitri.

——

Now came the hard part.

First, as it turned out, all those advisors, dukes, and church officials complaining of Dimitri’s lack of romantic prospects actually had quite the few ideas for who he _should_ be pursuing. Naturally, every single option provided was a blatant attempt to use a pretty daughter as a bargaining chip to secure a house’s future. Sylvain leafed through the many pages of suggestions with growing disgust, until finally he tossed them across the table so he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore; he’d known every word of these proposals for decades. When Dimitri arrived, he could tell him as much, and they could tackle that issue together.

Second, though, perhaps superceding the first— Dimitri had already made a valiant attempt to court him. Annette had put the flowers in a vase on his bedside table, and Sylvain had spent more time than he’d like to admit staring at them as he fell asleep. And Sylvain, in all his idiocy, had made the very deliberate choice to pretend he didn’t get it. To play stupid. Had Dimitri believed it, or had he thought it an attempt to reject him more subtly? There was a very real chance Sylvain had already blown his only opportunity, and hurt a dear friend in the process.

He could only dwell on it so long, though, and he hadn’t come up with any brilliant suave approaches by the time Dimitri came into the room, making a face at the papers spread about. “They’re bad,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Every last one of ‘em. First red flag: half of them I’ve dated!” Dimitri’s eye widened in blatant concern, getting a hearty laugh out of Sylvain. “Yeah, I know, right?”

Dimitri lost all airs of a proper king, flopping himself unceremoniously into the chair next to him. “Well... where do we start, then? Is it really so cold as choosing the _least bad_ of the lot?”

That unkingly pose spoke plain of the years Dimitri had spent dodging Empire patrols and eating whatever scraps he could get his hands on, from the way his legs jut out in front of him to the fist buried in his cheek, and Sylvain made up his mind.

“Dimitri, I made a mistake. A _massive_ mistake.”

His brow furrowed as he glanced over at Sylvain, sitting up a bit as his worry mounted. “What happened?”

Leaning across the arm of his chair, Sylvain closed the distance between the two of them, one hand pulling Dimitri’s face closer to give him a slow, chaste kiss. “...Thanks for the flowers.”

Luckily, Dimitri’s expression had relaxed considerably, a bewildered smile reaching his features instead as he laughed lightly. “I.. don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Sylvain.”

“Listen… I’m _not_ the least bad option. There are way better options, politically and logistically and.. let’s be honest, romantically—”

“Stop, stop,” Dimitri cut him off with more laughter, “you cannot convince me to choose _someone else_.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were. But Sylvain… your words struck me deeply. Perhaps I am not an untouchable beast. Or at least, if I am.. perhaps I am not without hope.”

Sylvain took a deep breath. “It’s not that. I mean— you’re right, but that’s not why I’m a good fit, really.” And with a sigh, he held out a hand towards Dimitri, palm upturned. “Felix, Dedue, Mercedes… we were all in a war, but they’ve got hearts of gold.” He quirked a smile, grasping Dimitri’s scarred hand in his own. “If you’re unclean, so am I.”

_We’ll burn together._


End file.
